Resegregation Now

[J-10]

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/29/op...=1&oref=slogin
Resegregation Now
Published: June 29, 2007

The Supreme Court ruled 53 years ago in Brown v. Board of Education that segregated education is inherently unequal, and it ordered the nation’s schools to integrate. Yesterday, the court switched sides and told two cities that they cannot take modest steps to bring public school students of different races together. It was a sad day for the court and for the ideal of racial equality.

Since 1954, the Supreme Court has been the nation’s driving force for integration. Its orders required segregated buses and public buildings, parks and playgrounds to open up to all Americans. It wasn’t always easy: governors, senators and angry mobs talked of massive resistance. But the court never wavered, and in many of the most important cases it spoke unanimously.

Yesterday, the court’s radical new majority turned its back on that proud tradition in a 5-4 ruling, written by Chief Justice John Roberts. It has been some time since the court, which has grown more conservative by the year, did much to compel local governments to promote racial integration. But now it is moving in reverse, broadly ordering the public schools to become more segregated.

Justice Anthony Kennedy, who provided the majority’s fifth vote, reined in the ruling somewhat by signing only part of the majority opinion and writing separately to underscore that some limited programs that take race into account are still acceptable. But it is unclear how much room his analysis will leave, in practice, for school districts to promote integration. His unwillingness to uphold Seattle’s and Louisville’s relatively modest plans is certainly a discouraging sign.

In an eloquent dissent, Justice Stephen Breyer explained just how sharp a break the decision is with history. The Supreme Court has often ordered schools to use race-conscious remedies, and it has unanimously held that deciding to make assignments based on race “to prepare students to live in a pluralistic society” is “within the broad discretionary powers of school authorities.”

Chief Justice Roberts, who assured the Senate at his confirmation hearings that he respected precedent, and Brown in particular, eagerly set these precedents aside. The right wing of the court also tossed aside two other principles they claim to hold dear. Their campaign for “federalism,” or scaling back federal power so states and localities have more authority, argued for upholding the Seattle and Louisville, Ky., programs. So did their supposed opposition to “judicial activism.” This decision is the height of activism: federal judges relying on the Constitution to tell elected local officials what to do.

The nation is getting more diverse, but by many measures public schools are becoming more segregated. More than one in six black children now attend schools that are 99 to 100 percent minority. This resegregation is likely to get appreciably worse as a result of the court’s ruling.

There should be no mistaking just how radical this decision is. In dissent, Justice John Paul Stevens said it was his “firm conviction that no Member of the Court that I joined in 1975 would have agreed with today’s decision.” He also noted the “cruel irony” of the court relying on Brown v. Board of Education while robbing that landmark ruling of much of its force and spirit. The citizens of Louisville and Seattle, and the rest of the nation, can ponder the majority’s kind words about Brown as they get to work today making their schools, and their cities, more segregated.

[shocker1]

Wow, a ruling that says schools can not make policy decisions based on race. Oh how racist! We must fill our schools based on racial quotas of color. To hell with districts and grades. It is like the magnet schools here, they were compelled to base student quotas on race now they must take students first come first serve. wow how racists of us to not consider race in policy.

I wonder when they will open up the SBA programs to all based on need and not what minority group you are or not a part of.

[Martial]

Thank God! I have to drive right past a nice elementary school 1/2 mile from my house to bring my kid to a ****ty school 5 miles away in the middle of ****-town.

[Dasein]

So I assume you advocate alternate means of funding public schools, Martial? After all, why should any kid have to go to the ****ty inner city school? Or is it ok if the poor folksgo to the ****ty school? After all, if they deserved a better education, their parents would live in a better neighborhood.

[shocker1]

So I assume you advocate alternate means of funding public schools, Martial? After all, why should any kid have to go to the ****ty inner city school? Or is it ok if the poor folksgo to the ****ty school? After all, if they deserved a better education, their parents would live in a better neighborhood.

When you stop using property tax as the means to fund school systems then we can talk. I would be willing for my Federal or even State taxes to increase and property to go down. To help other systems have more money but when you base it on your property ownership status then you drag down poor elderly, single, infertile people that neither have children in the system. All the while lower incomes folks who never bother gaining proper credit to buy a home pay nothing. As a minority they really should have no problem getting HUD money for that. There is even money to fix up their house with no need to payback. Neighborhood improvement programs are a plenty, you just have to get off your rear.

So spare me the we must spread around the color code way of allocating and make everyone who works in the system pay. Not just people who own property.

[2Sheds_Jackson]

Horrors! Are you telling me that if our goal is to eliminate race bias, then we should...eliminate race bias? It's almost makes too much sense.

[California Joe]

Vermont has a backasswards way of funding school sysyems that annoys the piss out of me. All of our property taxes fund education, but they all go to the state and then the state doles the money back to the school districts based on the number of children that are in school there. So in order to get more money for your district you need higher enrollments. Your district could have the highest property tax base in the state, but if you don't have a lot of kids in your local school all of your tax money is sent to another community. It's basically communism.

[mi35d]

Damn you man! Stop thinking logically!

[AZRON]

So I assume you advocate alternate means of funding public schools, Martial? After all, why should any kid have to go to the ****ty inner city school? Or is it ok if the poor folksgo to the ****ty school? After all, if they deserved a better education, their parents would live in a better neighborhood.

Sounds good , as long as you ignore the fact that Washington D.C. has close to the highest , if not the highest $$$$ per student in the entire U.S.

The problem with the schools has more to do with the teachers union's stranglehold on education than on a lack of funding.
IIRC , only one teacher got fired in all of the NYC school system in 2004.
Teacher unions are all about pay , benefits and job protection they have no leadership credentials in the quality of the product they market.
But what the hell, let's just throw more money down the darkhole , that is the Dem Party way !

[joe mama]

Don't you people understand that we need programs that favor and give preferential treatment to certain races because all races are equal and can compete equally and don't need preferential treatment? uh...no...wait a minute...

[Danik]

This guy should keep his opinion to himself.

I can summarize briefly with a conversation that was had with a jewish hippie at NYU: "Hey, in your opinion, what is more important, Diversity or Justice?"
Hippie: "Diversity"

[kamaz]

i could never understand race-based quotas. it just fundamentally seems racist, using the color of a child's skin to determine what school he or she goes to.

Brown decision was about integration, letting minorities into the same schools as whites. How is this in any way repealing Brown? If anything, it reafirms Brown decision by taking out racial barriers aka quotas.

I guess its only racism if against non-whites. Mindboggling that this decision wasnt implemented earlier.

whats even worse is hearing the liberals rant on about how Justice Thomas is an "Uncle Tom" or a "House Nigg-r" for not following the liberal groupthink.

the nerve of these people, who self-proclaim a monopoly on minority rights.

[Big Bad Bob]

here in South Carolina we fund schools with your counties property taxes fund your county schools. This benefits the really populated counties with major cities in them like Greenville, Spartanburg, Columbia, Mrytle Beach and Charleston, but due to the fact that we still have a majority of rural areas and counties those counties subsquently do not have equal funding for their county schools. Some lacking new books, old buildings, some even dont have air conditioning, which here in the deep south is actually pretty serious.

But i give a crap about public education, IMHO it has become state sponsored day care. At present i do not have kids, but when i do me and my wife will be looking for alternate forms of education to keep our kids out of the public school system.

I agree with the courts, why should schools be forced to keep quotas? If segregation is not being intentionally enforced, ie no black or hispanic or whatever can attend here. And the result of imbalance is just geographical, Why should the school system carry the burden of transporting students away from their homes to other side of town just so we get a nice warm fuzzy that are schools have equal racial mix?

This is not a slippery slope to reintroducing segregation. MY God i swear some people have damn chicken little syndrome, a small change and they think the sky is falling!

For one this premise of this argument is what is wrong with public education. Children dont learn better because the child on the left or right of them is a different race. This Social education is garbage and maybe this is why the US school system is substandard. Public education should care more about reading, writing,math, history and science more than a racial quota, and maybe when we have 100% high school graduation rates and 100% literacy rate then maybe we should start caring about racial quota but until then i think we have bigger issues to deal with.

This is just some stump speech for political candidates to run thier mouth about so it looks like the care about race, and bleeding hearts can get a nice warm fuzzy!

ITS F-ING FRIDAY!!

[thscott83]

Umm... read my location. Yeah, Seattle used to force students to bus across town for school because the north end was "too white" for district officials. Students would have to spend hours on the bus to go to a school that they had no local ties to, just because some politically correct bureaucrat implied that they were racist if they didn't sit by people of "color".

Neighborhood schools are better, period.

Despite hyperliberalism here, and being overwhelmed by peaceniks and geriatric hippies, the city is actually very segregated defacto by neighborhood. I grew up around more "diversity" in the suburbs than the part of Seattle I'm in. They will lynch you if you throw a can into the garbage, but don't mention the fact that your neighborhood is whiter than Western Nebraska. Forced busing did nothing to make Seattle more "diverse". If blacks started moving to Ballard, you'd see instantaneous white flight.

Many families left town for neighborhood schools on the Eastside, and other suburbs. The private schools in Seattle thrive. It's ironic that many Seattlites left the public schools to attend LOCAL Catholic neighborhood schools. I grew up in a neighborhood school in a middle class, suburban district, and my friends were very "diverse", but not in the eyes of government (Indians, Blacks, Russians, and Mormons... and as a non-Mormon, that can be a culture shock... I also learned that in a Russian house, you take your shoes off, and don't touch anything... there might be 5 items in the entire house, but they are worth more than you.). Apparently diversity is only skin deep.

I'm a teacher, and students across racial boundaries do a good job for the most part in getting along. It's mostly the parents who you have to worry about having primitive, racist views. It's too bad that they still think that students "of color" (aka black) WANT a handout. How do I tell my black students that though I expect their best, government still believes they should be judged by another standard.

SEATTLE HAS AN ENTIRE PUBLIC SCHOOL CALLED THE "AFRICAN-AMERICAN ACADEMY"....... it's 99% black... isn't THAT racist?

[shocker1]

You see I send my oldest to a Private school. However just like many here have said my property taxes fund the vast majority of education in Georgia. Cobb county gets all my money while the local county has to make excuses every year to raise property tax. I say get rid of all BS taxes and have a flat tax or 25% sales tax on non-food.